DBMS > IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison IBM Db2 vs. Informix vs. Snowflake vs. TimescaleDB

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Common in IBM host environments, 2 different versions for host and Windows/Linux

A secure embeddable database from IBM, positioned besides IBM Db2 as a relatively low-cost product optimized for OLTP and Internet of Things data

Cloud-based data warehousing service for structured and semi-structured data

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

Since Version 10.5 support for JSON/BSON documents compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes compatible with MongoDB

Relational DBMS

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store
RDF store

in Db2 LUW (Linux, Unix, Windows)
Spatial DBMS

with Db2 Spatial Extender

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Time Series DBMS

with Informix TimeSeries Extension

Relational DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	127.49
Rank	#8	Overall
	#5	Relational DBMS

Score	18.85
Rank	#35	Overall
	#22	Relational DBMS

Score	123.20
Rank	#9	Overall
	#6	Relational DBMS

Score	4.87
Rank	#74	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

www.ibm.com/products/db2

www.ibm.com/products/informix

www.snowflake.com

www.timescale.com

Technical documentation

www.ibm.com/docs/en/db2

informix.hcldoc.com
www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSGU8G/welcomeIfxServers.html

docs.snowflake.net/manuals/index.html

docs.timescale.com

Developer

IBM

IBM, HCL Technologies

Effective May 1st, 2017, HCL took on development, technical support, and product management teams, and works jointly with IBM on product strategy, marketing, and sales.

Snowflake Computing Inc.

Timescale

Initial release

1983

host version

1984

2014

2017

Current release

12.1, October 2016

14.10.FC5, November 2020

2.13.0, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free version is available

commercial

free developer edition available

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

C and C++

C, C++ and Java

Server operating systems

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
Solaris
Windows
z/OS

AIX
HP-UX
Linux
macOS
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

support of semi-structured data formats (JSON, XML, Avro)

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

Since Version 12.10 support for JSON/BSON datatypes

yes

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

ADO.NET
JDBC
JSON style queries

MongoDB compatible
ODBC
XQuery

JDBC
JSON API

MongoDB compatible
MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport)
ODBC
RESTful HTTP API

CLI Client
JDBC
ODBC

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Cobol
Delphi
Fortran
Java
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Visual Basic

.Net
C
C++
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby

JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

similar concept for controling cloud resources

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

only with Windows/Unix/Linux Version

Sharding

yes

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

with separate tools (MQ, InfoSphere)

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

Users with fine-grained authentication, authorization, and auditing controls

Users with fine-grained authorization concept, user roles and pluggable authentication

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

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